This book is beautiful.
Forget gorgeous girls, celebrity portraits, amazing magazine covers and … the book is art.
Hardcover, gold endpapers with a subtle repeated Playboy bunny logo, excellent paper stock and a foldout section … the aroma of the pages is well worth buying for.
This is the aspect eBooks will never be able to replicate: the feel and smell of paper, the weight and heft, the physicality of the work.
But that’s not why we buy hardcover art books is it?
The Playmates, The Personalities, The Celebrities, The Lifestyle, The Art, The Covers
Playmates I understand. Beautiful girls getting their gear off. But what is the difference between a Personality and a Celebrity? Ah, that’s it. Personalities mean males who therefore don’t appear nude, partially clothed and we mostly only see their heads and shoulders. Celebrities means female actresses and models who do appear nude. So the difference between Celebrity and Playmate? A celebrity is famous for something other than being naked in Playboy. A playmate isn’t an actress or a singer … and doesn’t have any other skill of note other than beauty.
The text introducing the Personalities carries on about interviewing famous actors and musicians and sports figures until they exhaust their rehearsed answers and get down to truth – stripped of the aura and protection they bring in with them. Yeah … right. Hefner’s guidelines are repeated (remember these for any boring as hell copywriting jobs by the way): “Tell them what they’re going to read, tell them what they are reading while they are reading it, and sum it up for them. Tell them what they read. Help them along”. So Personalities (with that capital P) give honest interviews which are reported as given? I don’t think so. I suppose Playboy like to think so and want their audience to think so, too.
There are plenty of interesting black and white sections of Personalities, Celebrities or whatever you want to call them. Some dead, some disgraced, some still around and others looking ridiculously young and vital.
For some reason I always think of Christmas when I see this photo.
Playboy as ice-breaker
In the Celebrities section, the story of Playboy as the morality leader, the ice-breaker of foolish sexual suppression and hypocrisy starts to build up steam. They fancy themselves as cultural warriors rather than smut peddlers. They were the forefront of importing European freedoms into America rather than pushing sex to make a profit. I agree to a point but there is plenty they leave out – starting with the money to be made. Hugh didn’t start his magazine to be a cultural warrior – he started it for cash baby!
Oh, I forgot – plenty of naked girls in this bit. Actually, through all of it. Is that clear? This whole book is packed full of naked girls and a few male celebrities in black and white. 250 pages, full-colour chosen from ten million images.
The Lifestyle
Naah, forget it. You’re not buying this book for the words just like men don’t buy Playboy for the words either. The text is only slightly interesting and once you’ve read a few pages it’s pretty clear it is a biased retelling of the tale. Let’s move on.
There are only a limited number of faces in the world
If beauty is in symmetry and now we can record faces for posterity we will eventually see actors who remind us of actors and models of the deep past. Faces seem familiar … was she that actress? Wasn’t she in …? But no, they weren’t. They’re models, beauty queens, pin-ups …
As you look through the photographs you see these old actors and actresses long gone and can pair them up with their current incarnation. It’s quite strange to see someone who is almost George Clooney – but not.
The dimensions of women certainly have changed over the years as has the positions they photograph them in. The early photos are much closer to the dimensions of “real” women (although even the very first photographs are still of extraordinarily gorgeous girls). The later photos have proportions heading towards Barbie. Hips narrow, waistlines slim, breasts change shape and position. Girls stretch like gum on a hot day, extending at the waist. Facial features and teeth come into alignment. The expressions imply more and combine with the position. The sexual beat becomes stronger.
On the muff
In the fifties you can’t see anything … then comes the seventies and it appears! Muff for all. Move on a few more years and it vanishes again – not because it is demurely hidden like 1950s Marilyn but because it’s gone. Trimmed. Cut. Brazillianed.
It is perhaps this part of the book that is most interesting. Playboy is not a cultural warrior but a cultural record – perhaps the first photographic record of a changing society. The photographs change tone and quality as technology progresses but pay no mind to that – look at the content. There is a photo of two women on a sofa, close to kissing. Then we realise in the mirror above them we can see a man watching them. He is fully dressed – they are naked. It acknowledges voyeurism and sets the scene for a staged sexual experience. There are other photos of this type also – some appearing as perhaps frames from pornography. Instead of capturing the girl they now seek to capture the moment.
Will it get you jumped?
Hmm. I’m going to go with … no. It’s simply too big a book. Taking it off the shelf is like pulling down the encyclopedia. Smaller books like Eric Stanton’s work or smaller photographic journals are inviting. This is a tome – big and heavy and too much to be casually taken off the shelf.
How I got Playboy, 50 years: The Photographs
$95 from the Technical Book Shop in around 2003 I’m guessing. I think it was an impulse buy which just shows I was much richer and more impulsive back then. It’s a big heavy book so I suggest buying it from a shop rather than online – the postage will be a killer.
Happy reading,
Mat
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Ponies were central to our mission
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